WEB-INF missing - Adding JAR files to a Liberty application in Bluemix

Question

I have created an application using the Liberty boilerplate. I have added GIT to create and populate repository for the app. I need to add an additional .jar file to my application. However, when I go to the GIT repository and look at the files structure I don't see the WEB-INF directory.

How can I add .jar files to my project so that the files end up in the WEB-INF/lib directory of my application?

Please advice.

Answer 1

Yes, you are right, the structure of the app repository has changed as it seems that the build has been changed from ant to maven based. If you want to add a jar to the standard java web app structure which expects the jar to be located in the WEB-INF/lib folder you need to define a dependency which will point to the jar. All maven dependencies need to come from a repository so before you can define a dependency for your jar you need to declare a local repository which holds the jar. Here are steps you can follow:

1. In the root of you project in GIT create new folder and call it 'repo'
2. In the 'repo' folder create a folder structure which defines the project the jar comes from and version of the jar like: /com/mycomp/myproject/1.0
3. Import thejar.jar into the 'repo/com/mycomp/myproject/1.0/ folder
4. Rename thejar.jar to thejar-1.0.jar (or whatever version you have used);

5. In the pom.xml file add the following:

   <repositories>
    <repository>
     <id>ProjectRepo</id>
     <name>ProjectRepo</name>
     <url>file://${project.basedir}/repo</url>
    </repository>
   </repositories>
   
   <dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
     <dependency>
      <groupId>com.mycomp.myproject</groupId>
      <artifactId>thejar</artifactId>
      <version>1.0</version>
     </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    </dependencyManagement>
   
   <dependencies>
    <dependency>
     <groupId>com.mycomp.myproject</groupId>
     <artifactId>thejar</artifactId>
     <scope>compile</scope>
    </dependency>
   </dependencies>
   

6. Commit and push the changes. Your should see in the war WEB-INF/lib/thejar.jar I hope it helps. Please let me know how does it work for you. Good luck. Kris